VLOOKUP function

Posted 2024-01-01 20:56:17

Use VLOOKUP when you need to find things in a table or a range by row. For example, look up a price of an automotive part by the part number, or find an employee name based on their employee ID.

In its simplest form, the VLOOKUP function says:

=VLOOKUP(What you want to look up, where you want to look for it, the column number in the range containing the value to return, return an Approximate or Exact match – indicated as 1/TRUE, or 0/FALSE).

Tip: The secret to VLOOKUP is to organize your data so that the value you look up (Fruit) is to the left of the return value (Amount) you want to find.

Technical details

How to get started

There are four pieces of information that you will need in order to build the VLOOKUP syntax:

The value you want to look up, also called the lookup value.
The range where the lookup value is located. Remember that the lookup value should always be in the first column in the range for VLOOKUP to work correctly. For example, if your lookup value is in cell C2 then your range should start with C.
The column number in the range that contains the return value. For example, if you specify B2:D11 as the range, you should count B as the first column, C as the second, and so on.
Optionally, you can specify TRUE if you want an approximate match or FALSE if you want an exact match of the return value. If you don't specify anything, the default value will always be TRUE or approximate match.

Now put all of the above together as follows:

=VLOOKUP(lookup value, range containing the lookup value, the column number in the range containing the return value, Approximate match (TRUE) or Exact match (FALSE)).

Examples

Here are a few examples of VLOOKUP:

Example 1

=VLOOKUP (B3,B2:E7,2,FALSE)

VLOOKUP looks for Fontana in the first column (column B) in the table_array B2:E7, and returns Olivier from the second column (column C) of the table_array. False returns an exact match.

Example 2

=VLOOKUP (102,A2:C7,2,FALSE)

VLOOKUP looks for an exact match (FALSE) of the last name for 102 (lookup_value) in the second column (column B) in the A2:C7 range, and returns Fontana.

Example 3

=IF(VLOOKUP(103,A1:E7,2,FALSE)="Souse","Located","Not found")

IF checks to see if VLOOKUP returns Sousa as the last name of employee correspoinding to 103 (lookup_value) in A1:E7 (table_array). Because the last name corresponding to 103 is Leal, the IF condition is false, and Not Found is displayed.

Example 4

=INT(YEARFRAC(DATE(2014,6,30),VLOOKUP(105,A2:E7,5,FLASE),1))

VLOOKUP looks for the birth date of the employee corresponding to 109 (lookup_value) in the A2:E7 range (table_array), and returns 03/04/1955. Then, YEARFRAC subtracts this birth date from 2014/6/30 and returns a value, which is then converted by INY to the integer 59.

Example 5

IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(105,A2:E7,2,FLASE))=TRUE,"Employee not found",VLOOKUP(105,A2:E7,2,FALSE))

IF checks to see if VLOOKUP returns a value for last name from column B for 105 (lookup_value). If VLOOKUP finds a last name, then IF will display the last name, otherwise IF returns Employee not found. ISNA makes sure that if VLOOKUP returns #N/A, then the error is replaced by Employee not found, instead of #N/A.

In this example, the return value is Burke, which is the last name corresponding to 105.

Combine data from several tables onto one worksheet by using VLOOKUP

You can use VLOOKUP to combine multiple tables into one, as long as one of the tables has fields in common with all the others. This can be especially useful if you need to share a workbook with people who have older versions of Excel that don't support data features with multiple tables as data sources - by combining the sources into one table and changing the data feature's data source to the new table, the data feature can be used in older Excel versions (provided the data feature itself is supported by the older version).

A worksheet with columns that use VLOOKUP to get data from other tables

Here, columns A-F and H have values or formulas that only use values on the worksheet, and the rest of the columns use VLOOKUP and the values of column A (Client Code) and column B (Attorney) to get data from other tables.

Copy the table that has the common fields onto a new worksheet, and give it a name.
Click Data > Data Tools > Relationships to open the Manage Relationships dialog box.
For each listed relationship, note the following:
- The field that links the tables (listed in parentheses in the dialog box). This is the lookup_value for your VLOOKUP formula.
- The Related Lookup Table name. This is the table_array in your VLOOKUP formula.
- The field (column) in the Related Lookup Table that has the data you want in your new column. This information is not shown in the Manage Relationships dialog - you'll have to look at the Related Lookup Table to see which field you want to retrieve. You want to note the column number (A=1) - this is the col_index_num in your formula.
To add a field to the new table, enter your VLOOKUP formula in the first empty column using the information you gathered in step 3.

In our example, column G uses Attorney (the lookup_value) to get the Bill Rate data from the fourth column (col_index_num = 4) from the Attorneys worksheet table, tblAttorneys (the table_array), with the formula =VLOOKUP([@Attorney],tbl_Attorneys,4,FALSE).

The formula could also use a cell reference and a range reference. In our example, it would be =VLOOKUP(A2,'Attorneys'!A:D,4,FALSE).
Continue adding fields until you have all the fields that you need. If you are trying to prepare a workbook containing data features that use multiple tables, change the data source of the data feature to the new table.

Common Problems

Best practices

Do this	Why
Use absolute references for range_lookup	Using absolute references allows you to fill-down a formula so that it always looks at the same exact lookup range. Learn how to use absolute cell references.
Don't store number or date values as text.	When searching number or date values, be sure the data in the first column of *table_array* isn't stored as text values. Otherwise, VLOOKUP might return an incorrect or unexpected value.
Sort the first column	Sort the first column of the *table_array* before using VLOOKUP when range_lookup is TRUE.
Use wildcard characters	If *range_lookup* is FALSE and *lookup_value* is text, you can use the wildcard characters—the question mark (?) and asterisk ()—in lookup_value. A question mark matches any single character. An asterisk matches any sequence of characters. If you want to find an actual question mark or asterisk, type a tilde (~) in front of the character. For example, =VLOOKUP("Fontan?",B2:E7,2,FALSE) will search for all instances of Fontana* with a last letter that could vary.
Make sure your data doesn't contain erroneous characters.	When searching text values in the first column, make sure the data in the first column doesn't have leading spaces, trailing spaces, inconsistent use of straight ( ' or " ) and curly ( ‘ or “) quotation marks, or nonprinting characters. In these cases, VLOOKUP might return an unexpected value. To get accurate results, try using the CLEAN function or the TRIM function to remove trailing spaces after table values in a cell.